Believing in Us
by Ferrero13
Summary: Too crippled to walk, too broken to heal, too loved to care. Wilson/fem!House


**Disclaimer:** Unless I have magically undergone a gender change, a name change, an identity transplant and aged in units of decades simultaneously, I am not David Shore and thus do not own House, M.D. and any recognisable character or plot.

**Warnings:** Story involves gender-bent House and House/Wilson. Situations presented are intimate with mentions of non-explicit sex. Story also involves a lack of plot, a lot of musings in second person point of view and deliberate masking of House's gender and Wilson's identity until much further in. Author must not be held accountable for misinformation because she has only watched up until the middle of season 3; all information on other seasons whether accurate or completely false is accumulated solely from obsessive reading of fan fiction. All other information is fabricated and not expected to make any appearances in the actual series. Author has also never posted anything on before so she begs for your niceness and pleasant reviews or she will hunt you down and make mince pies out of you.

**Believing in Us**

By: Ferrero13

You look at him through heavy-lidded eyes, hardly daring to believe that you have finally, _finally_, got him in your arms. He is now exclusively yours. You don't have to share him with another wife or another girlfriend, both of which he has a chronic inclination to hook up with at any moment, apparently. You are his and he is yours, and you hope it will stay that way forever because you can't imagine losing him all over again to someone new; some other fresh face that you are most certain is not right for him.

But you are also afraid that _you_ are not right for him. You are a miserable, misanthropic cripple who pops painkillers more often now than before because you have sworn off Vicodin and started on a cocktail of other painkillers that have no effect whatsoever on the throbbing pain in your missing thigh muscle (and you wonder if it is possible to feel pain in an area that doesn't exist on your body and that isn't connected to you in any way anymore). And the reason you vowed never to touch it again is him. You know he doesn't want you addicted to a Class 3 opiate that has gotten you in jail but you also know that he won't make you change against your will. He is the only person who doesn't want you to change and you are not going to exchange that for anything the world can give.

So you changed for him. You gave up Vicodin, your primary pain reliever, and went through hellish rehabilitation in Mayfield. Oh yeah, you were there also because you were seeing his dead girlfriend everywhere. Amber used to sit around and poke you where it hurt the most. She knew exactly where to prod, exactly how hard to push to make you fall, and exactly who to taunt you with to make you break. Somewhere deep down, you think that perhaps you're such a masochist that even your own hallucination is out to get you as well.

With Amber gone he walked you through one of the toughest time of your life by being beside you. He even bought a condo for your sake (well, not really, but you do live in it and you haven't forked a single dollar)! And when you told him to buy whatever best represented him you came home to a brand new piano. When he looked at you nervously after it finally registered that yes, he did in fact spend good money on something he would never touch simply because anything he played on _your_ piano had been the most discordant thing you've ever heard (including crying babies and nagging mothers), you smiled so broadly your cheeks hurt the next day and the day after.

You treasure the piano so much because it is something he bought specifically for you. It is something he set aside such a large amount of money for you for. It isn't a loan for a motorbike which you eventually paid him back; it isn't even a bail-House-out-of-jail lump sum from when you got locked up in jail after the damned cop arrested you for narcotics trafficking and speeding way above the speed limit. It certainly isn't more than ten years' worth of stolen lunches in which he more often than not bought your share with his so that you'd stop pilfering his fries-stock (that never succeeded, just for the record).

You'd spent so much time sitting on its polished black chair, fingers skimming over the taintless white surface of its keys, eyeing your own reflection in its perfect ebony finish. And you are convinced that this is perfect. This is the most you will ever get out of him and so this is your most treasured possession. You were certain that he will never love you the way you love him but the piano is compensation enough. It would be too difficult to love someone like you anyway. The consolation prize is beautiful and you will never let go of it.

Sam came and left – the latter because he had been spending way too much time with you than she deemed was appropriate for best friends. The piano stayed, though. You know she is jealous, and you are jealous too. You are jealous that she can tell him "I love you" so freely without him freaking out and walking out on you. You are jealous that he would come home and see her in _your_ loft, the loft you now share with him, and he would kiss her and make breakfast, lunch and dinner for her. The only times he did that were after the infarction and your release from Mayfield, and only because you had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. And when you moved back in with him the piano was still there, newly shined, as if he was anxious for you to return. He tried to apologise for kicking you out but the fact that he hadn't gotten rid of the piano along with you made you giddy enough to fly. It meant that he still hoped you would return.

You don't know when you started to fall in love with him. It could have been when you first met after his first wife – Sam, you think with distaste, and wonder how she could have the audacity to want a second chance with him – served him divorce papers at the table. You suppose you should thank her, because if she hadn't done that you'd never have met him at the bar where some idiot was playing "Leave a Tender Moment Alone" over and over again and you'd never have bailed him out of jail – you'd never have become friends. Another part of you leers that he would have been better off not knowing you.

He is the best thing that ever happened to you. After being such a disappointment to your parents for being the epitome of things they did _not_ want you to be, nearly getting kicked out of medical school and getting fired from jobs you haven't even started because you were such a jerk, he was the only good thing that happened to you. You'd have to endure wife number two and three, but he was always there. You are his longest relationship and he is yours, and you are always together. His marriage with wife number two – Bonnie, you recall without much impression – fell apart because he was wallowing so deeply in guilt for not being there during your infarction even though he was your medical proxy.

You didn't tell him that it was because you wanted him to have a life outside of you no matter how much you wanted to keep him all to yourself. You didn't think you were worth ruining his second marriage for (but you ruined it anyway, and you feel disturbed that you weren't as remorseful as you should have been). You were the one who begged Cuddy not to notify him about your infarction, and she put you in a chemically induced coma as per your wishes until he came back and convinced you that partial amputation of your leg muscle was the best. You knew that too because your leg just wouldn't stop screaming in pain but you didn't want to admit it. You argued with him until he declared you not of sound mind and made his decision as your proxy.

Despite how angry you were you couldn't stay away. When he came back after you reawakened from the morphine and whatever anaesthetic they put you under to let you sleep through the worst part of the post-surgery pain you couldn't keep him at bay and he walked right into your heart again. You let him take care of you while you tried to get over your bum leg – you never will, but you will be grateful for how much closer it has brought you to him and him to you – and during the days when you wake up to macadamia nut pancakes almost every day you could pretend that everything was fine and you were, somehow, loved by him.

That was, perhaps, when you realised that you didn't just want to drag him to Monster Truck rallies as friends. You wanted and still want to wake up and hear him blow-dry his hair every morning, taste his pancakes before you start procrastinating about going to work, banter a little about the merits of putting the glassware at the bottom of the dishwasher (you will never win this, but you will be content at the childish smile on his face when he realises he's one upped you in verbal spats, and you will have no intention of telling him his dopey grin is the reason why you start them in the first place), and finally laugh your way to his car after he finally convinces you that it is too dangerous for you to ride your bike to work (despite how the radiantly the sun will be shining that summer). After all is said and done, you would _then_ spring a surprise on him in the form of two all access passes for the next Monster Truck rally somewhere on the other end of the States. He would freak out – in the good way – and you would be set for the best weekend of your life until the next rally is announced.

Just about a month ago that would have all been wishful thinking. Today it is so likely you can feel yourself tensing up in anticipation and fear – fear that it is all a dream and that you have relapsed and are now hallucinating an entire relationship with someone you cannot risk losing.

Yeah, that'll be the icing on top of the "screwed up" cake.

But he feels so real. His lips are on yours, closed but still so sensual that it makes you shiver. You know his eyes are closed even without looking at them because that's just the way he is. He respects your privacy that you don't want him seeing you weak and vulnerable. What he doesn't know is that he is the only one you don't mind seeing you exposed. He's helped you into the bath before after your infarction. He's seen everything there is to see – your pain, your anger, your frustration, your hopelessness and your tears. He's seen every part of your body (though he is modest enough to try and deny it, but his sunset-coloured cheeks give him away).

He's seen your scarred leg and he still loves you. At least, that's what the kissing seems to be telling you. You are up against the wall, his hands on either side of your head, his legs brushing your thighs as he continues to move against your mouth. Your hands are lost in his hair – inwardly you find enough of a rational mind to muse that it is no longer perfectly coiffed, but you also know that he knows you don't care if it is – and the pain in your right leg is lost in moment. You realise that you've found a better substitute for Vicodin than ibuprofen will ever be. When he finally nudges your mouth with his, you close your eyes completely.

In the darkness behind your lids you feel his mouth opening and closing against yours, his tongue flicking lightly over your bottom lip. His mouth pries yours open, not that you'd be unwilling to let him in, and he, like a boy kissing a girl for the first time, hesitatingly trails his tongue along your lips, making you hot where it has been.

It is sweet. He moves gently and slowly in you, coaxing your tongue with his, as if afraid you would break. You have a bum leg that calls for attention twenty-four seven, a brain that hallucinated for months before receiving treatment, and bullet wounds in your neck and abdomen, but you are not fragile. In spite of this, it feels nice to not be treated like an unfeeling jerk. He is being careful with you, acting like what he does can actually hurt you. You appreciate it because he _can_ hurt you. Maybe no one else can, but _he_ certainly has the power to run you into the ground. It doesn't matter if someone else tries to kill you. You wouldn't die unless he wants you to. You are too stubborn and he is too perfect.

So perhaps his perfection has nothing to do with how you would bend every which way for him. He could have the ugliest hook nose in New Jersey and you would still love him. But he doesn't have an ugly hook nose and he _is_ perfect, which is a plus for you since you have fallen so far from perfection you can't quite remember what it is until you see him at work in the morning. He is so perfect you don't dare to touch him, but in the same way, it is because he is so perfect that he can find enough space in his too-large-to-be-real heart for you, space enough to make you the most important person in his life.

You are messed up, and he loves you. You can tell because best friends don't kiss with tongue. There are a thousand other things that best friends don't do that the both of you are doing at the moment, like pinning you against the wall while he continues to savour the taste of your mouth. Every corner and every surface must feel the lingering sensation of his tongue caressing maddeningly slowly over your skin before he pulls out and lets you into him, tongue sliding over tongue, moist and warm. You return the favour with languorous licks of his wet cavern.

It has been years since you last kissed like this. It has been so long that you don't even know if you have ever kissed anyone like this before. Each movement is so painfully slow, so achingly tender, you wonder not for the first time if it is all a dream (or a hallucination, as is more likely in your case). You feel your lips rubbing against each other's, his skin against yours, every little wet breath on your mouth or light touch there causing all the pressure nerves in your lips to spontaneously fire all at once, overloading your already addled brain.

He moves to cup your face in his hands. They are large and warm and they remind you of security and safety. They remind you, even more insistently, of love and affection and all the things the two of you could be and will be. Your legs are weak from standing and in response to your increasingly strong grip on his shirt (when did your hands move? You last remember them running through his smooth, chocolate hair) he presses up even more against you and supports you with one of his hands that has moved from your face to under your arm and onto your back so you do not slip further.

You are grateful for his help, just as you have been all the other times he has helped you. You are just not good at showing it, and you don't try to show it often because many times he brushes them off as another one of your jokes although both you and he know that you really mean it. There are some things between the two of you that don't need words to express, and affection and appreciation are amongst them, especially those from you. The only people who need to know you mean to say "thank you" when you say "suck it up" are you and him. Actually, it doesn't matter whether you know, all that matters is that he understands you well enough to predict the words you don't say and smiles appropriately when he sees your gratefulness in the way you steal one less fry from his plate (or the way you thrust your tongue deeper into his mouth like you are doing now in a desperate attempt to get more of him).

Your fingers dig into his back and he groans into your mouth. You swallow the noise as it comes and pant quietly when he pulls away wetly, tilting his head before lowering his mouth down on yours again, nibbling instead of kissing. His hand is no longer on your back but in your hair, the other one that used to be beside your head now presses you even closer to him. You don't think to question why his hands have moved into places the other hand could have reached more easily. All you want to do right now is to wrap yourself up in his embrace and feel his body through your shirt and his. You want affirmation that he is there even though he's been there for you for years – just not in this way.

With your lips caught tightly between his, your senses are slowly getting shorted from all the different sensations that are coming in torrents. You have never felt this alive. Every nerve ending in your body is tingling with excitement, all on alert and ready for his next touch. You are past middle-aged and yet the warm stirring in your abdomen is stronger than it has ever been when you were at your prime. When his teeth find a particularly sensitive spot on your lower lip you gasp his name, your mind wiping out itself as it rides on the wave of pleasure that come shooting through you from the spot he nipped.

"James!"

His lips release yours and press onto your cheek, slack, before upturning into a smile that feels so much like a smirk. You revel in the fact that you are the only one who has seen every single one of his smiles and smirks and have them all identified and numbered from one to three hundred and sixty-two. You recognise this one as number ninety-one, the smirk that means that he is smug – really smug, you amend after a second's thought – about something and is so pleased that he will do everything to have that something happen once more.

You are right, of course, as you always are.

"Say that again."

You crack open an eye and see that his are fully open, dark with desire and bright with mirth, his lips ghosting across your face, still in the smugly satisfied smirk that you think makes him look absolutely ravishing and sexy (but you will die before you admit this to him, although you don't doubt that he already knows – that is why he insists on smirking like that about a thousand percent more now that your relationship is no longer even vaguely platonic). Out of habit, you refuse him with a taunt that you know he will be baited by. Your lips, swollen and red, turn his smirk back on him to remind him that you are still you even when he has you clinging to him like he is the only thing keeping you alive (he is, but no one needs to know that).

"Make me."

Between the both of you your messages get across by more than just mere words. You have perfected the art of shortening a lecture to a sentence, and he in turn has learnt to unpack your loaded sentences and recite every word in its exact order with perfect ease. It is little wonder that he is immediately hooked by your two words and is on you in a breath, suckling your already plump lip. You smile into the endearing act and slide your arms from his back to his neck where you know he likes you rubbing.

As you press circles and rub lines into his neck just the way he enjoys it, you try to recall the last time you called him by his first name, and realise you have never. He has always been "Wilson" or, when you're in a particularly playful mood and are out to destroy his reputation, "Jimmy". On occasion, you find yourself mocking him with "Boy Wonder Oncologist", dubbing him your best buddy whom people thank when they are told they're dying. For some unfathomable reason he exudes pheromones that make his smile irresistible to everyone such that he is impossible to dislike. You know because you have been on the receiving end of his genuine heart-stopping smiles more than anyone else.

When you cried his name you discovered that you like saying it, and you have every intention of saying it again even if he doesn't try to make you. You will say his name over and over again while he is asleep, threading your long fingers in his mussed up hair, enjoying the serenity of the moment when everything is simply perfect – he is with you and you are with him and there is no one between. You have stuck to "Wilson" because saying "James" makes this real, and what is real can be lost, but now, saying "James" seems to make him so much more yours than ever before that you can't hate it.

He makes a muffled groan against your lips as your fingers continue their ministrations. You decide to stop kneading with your digits and move on to using your entire palm. Wrapping your hands around his neck, one at the base of his head and the other just below it, you squeeze firmly around the bones of his neck and feel him exhale heavily in response. The arm he has around your waist tugs you closer just a fraction of a second after the heels of your palms first dig into his nape, and the lips on your mouth have gone from sucking your lips to fluttering frantic kisses across your cheek, his breath shallow after his first deep expiration.

His breathing evens out after a few more strong squeezes with your hands, and his kisses are no longer chaste. He trails his lips down your neck and to your clavicle where he places possessive kisses so hard you are sure your collar will be littered with bruises when you wake tomorrow. You will not be ashamed to show them, and you will have a fun time throwing innuendo-loaded remarks at your fellows when cannot stop staring at your exposed collarbone at work tomorrow. You will take great care to select a shirt which collar dips lower than usual (not as low as Cuddy's, because your assets aren't as great as hers are, and even if they are you don't want anybody but him seeing them).

You can feel his heart thumping against your chest and you think that he can probably feel yours as well. Blood rushes in your ears like a crashing wave, rolling and tumbling and making you feel so hot and out of control. His kisses have evolved into little nips and bites of your skin – you'll have more than just bruises to show your fellows now, and you smile dazedly with euphoria when the thought occurs to you. He is simply amazing. You can't help but think that _this_ is why he's had three wives even with his stunning record of infidelity.

Distantly, you tell yourself that this is one relationship in which he is not going to have an affair during. You can tell whenever he does something that his conscience wouldn't forgive him for so you know the signs to look for. But you hope you will never have to watch out for them because you want to believe that this means as much to him as it means to you. You will not cheat on him because you have wanted this for years. Your mind can't even think of cheating without your stomach flipping on you in disagreement.

Your collar is wet with his saliva as his tongue massages where his teeth have bitten into, soothing your skin more effectively than any masseur can. Biting cold penetrates deep into you wherever his tongue and lips have left, his hands now pinning your shoulders firmly against the wall, your cheek against his rich brown hair, your nose in the curve of his neck, and your lips begin to work on his nape like he did yours.

The sensation is overwhelming, and you let out a noise.

It isn't "James". It isn't "Wilson". It isn't even "Jimmy" or the embarrassing "Boy Wonder Oncologist" (somewhere inside, your innate puzzle-solver tries to calculate the possibility of anyone gasping "Boy Wonder Oncologist" at the height of passion and comes up with a number that is very nearly negligible). It is a keening sound that, from the shudder of his breath and his body that is suddenly flush against you, has left him wanting more. In some ways you think that it is better than you moaning his name into his ear.

"Greg."

He whimpers your name into your neck and you suddenly debate the stupidity of hospital staff, especially the nurses in obstetrics and gynaecology (OB/GYN, you instinctively abbreviate) of the hospital you were born in. Because of a confusion involving mixed up delivery ward numbers and a green gynaecologist in the habit of forgetting standard procedure – especially the part where he's supposed to go, "Congratulations, it's a (insert gender of baby here)" – who was delivering without senior supervision for the first time, your parents were left with the impression that they had a baby boy. The misinformation wasn't corrected until your birth certificate had been drawn up and your name officially recorded as "Gregory House" for the rest of your life.

You learnt to live with that name and have even come to like it. When you went to school no one even suspected that you weren't a boy until high school when you hit puberty and started developing secondary sexual characteristics which you didn't bother hiding since it would be too much of a trouble. It wasn't as if you deliberately led them into believing that you go to the men's at the local shopping centre anyway. You haven't been the perfect girl and to be truthful you were always a little more rough than all the other girls your age, so you just let them assume.

Even then you didn't really fit in with the boys, and you certainly won't fit in now with his mouth latched onto your neck in what would most assuredly be a homosexual way if you actually were considered one of them. You were sporty but you weren't obsessed, you liked Monster Trucks (still do, and this is why you clung onto him and refused to let go when you learnt he liked them too, until his other traits started appealing to you more and more and Monster Trucks were relegated to a less important status than his million-watt smiles) but you weren't mad about giant, city-destroying monsters that drip saliva over innocent citizens.

If you had embraced your rightful gender and all its stereotypes you would never discover the beauty of Monster Trucks – and by extension the deepest friendship ever to exist on earth – or master the art of sarcasm and being an overall jackass. Admittedly, your parents would be over the moon (and whatever stars lie beyond) if you managed to conform to their image of an ideal child, but then you wouldn't be here with him, happily hugging him closer to you, had you not gone against their adamant "suggestion" and chosen to become a doctor.

Because of him you don't regret giving up the white-faced dolls you never really liked. Anyone who dared to give you a Barbie for your birthday became a new target for you to practise your biting wit on. There were a great many, considering your father's status, which caused your wit to sharpen with record speed. After many failed attempts to get you to cooperate your father gave up and kept you in your room (you didn't mind) when he had guests over, and your birthdays are no longer mentioned at his workplace. That extra time was spent poring over medical journals, thus explaining your impressive knowledge and understanding of medical terms (and loopholes) that never fail to keep Chase frozen in awe of your diagnostic prowess. Your brilliance, naturally, is innate talent.

His grip has dropped from your waist to your leg, carefully stroking the ugly scar that runs where your thigh muscle should be. He knows you are averse to touch. You fight your instincts to flinch away. You have never liked being touched, especially there. Everyone who has seen the sunken flesh immediately distances from you. You have to consciously force yourself to remain still even though he has seen it, touched it and even massaged it without so much as a flick of his eyes away from it. You have to remind yourself that he isn't just _anyone_; he will not leave you because of it.

He pulls away for a moment and flashes you a coy smile, hand shyly slipping under your shirt to rest firmly against your skin. You can't help but blank out and notice nothing but the hotness of his hands and the coolness of your neck. It already misses him and not even a second has passed since he stopped nicking it with his teeth and lips. His smile is remarkably reminiscent of the one he failed to suppress when he figured for himself that your apology during your "rehabilitation" was real despite your quitting Vicodin being a farce. The fact that it happened in jail was a blessing. You didn't know you liked him then but you did have a sudden, inexplicable urge to hug him, and the bars thankfully did wonders to discourage you, so you settled for a small smile you hope he could tell was a smile.

It was quite possibly the first time you've seen him so pleased with something _you_ have done. You still remember every detail of it, how he angled his head so he didn't have to look at you while his eyes crinkled with happiness he was certain would have made you uncomfortable, how his lips pursed from his fruitless effort to keep the smile off his face, how his eyes flickered over to you between blinks for only a second as if he were hiding his shyness, how his cheeks bunched up with a dusting of natural flush that just happened to coincide with your passive admission (you don't see how "believe what you want" can translate into a blush-inducing statement, though), how his eyebrow (that on some days you wish to shave and on others can't see why you ever wanted them shaved) twitched and arched in a way that sent your heart racing, and how rich his voice sounded when he told you goodnight. Your name has never sounded so captivating.

That night you figured that you must be obsessed, because you could hardly fall asleep with your mind stubbornly stuck on his dreamy smile and you don't know why you, genius diagnostician of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, can't think about anything but how perfect he looked (and sounded) in those few seconds when he was suddenly playing a grade school girl giving her crush a sloppy, hand-made Valentine's for the first time. Even when you did eventually succumb to sleep all you dreamt about was his smile. And now you have all three hundred and sixty-two of them filed away in your mind. It is your new happy place. You retreat to it every time you're waiting for your fellows to finish the tests you sent them to do.

You didn't think you'd been apart from Vicodin long enough to cause madness so obsession was your ticket out of what promised to be a very exciting internal monologue about what the rapid onset of tachycardia at the sight of his smile could mean. That very exciting internal monologue could only be put off for so long before you gave in, skipped the monologue part, and went directly to the conclusion you would have arrived at had you actually bothered with the monologue (then again, the monologue _is_ redundant, seeing as you have effectively reached the same conclusion without it): You are in love with your best friend.

You were very good at hiding it. You still are very good at hiding it. None of your fellows suspect anything since the number of 'Doctor Wilson and Doctor House aren't actually best friends but bed buddies' rumours hasn't increased after you got together. You grudgingly admit that he is capable of great discretion as well two weeks after you relationship evolved into something more. You expected it to make the "Top Story of Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital" in less than a week. He has held out for a month and it seems like you'll be the one presenting others with the clues about your apparently "secret love affair" with him rather than him. Loose shirt collars are very revealing of hickeys, and hickeys are very revealing of getting laid (or just simply ravaged, as you are by him right now).

You'd think that the nurses would have caught on to his "I'm practising celibacy with everyone in the nursing staff" by now.

His hands are running up and down your back and the black band tee you're wearing is slowly riding up your stomach, revealing pasty white skin. You don't make it a habit to wear short shirts with dipping necklines (unlike some Dean of Medicine you know) so your tan only ever goes up to your forearm, and your torso gets about as much exposure as your chest, meaning none. You find yourself slipping again because your bum leg can't hold you up when you're this delirious, so he reaches an arm down to urge it around him. You comply without much thought because you trust him, sometimes even more than you trust yourself. Drug addiction does not a sane person make.

There are times when you think that he is secretly grateful for the invention of unisex tees because he spends about as much time fussing over how much you hid your figure (which, by the way, is currently great, but time is ticking against you) as he does fussing that you don't show too much of it. For some reason, the two of you are taking things much slower than you would have with your other dates. You know that he bedded his third wife, Julie, after little over a week of acquaintanceship. He has known you for almost twenty years, been going steady with you for a month, and still hasn't tried to tumble into bed with you yet – "yet" being the operative word here.

Where his hands currently are is telling, though. Skin on skin, hot, warm, and electrifying; neither of you can get enough of it. Pretty soon you will be sweating it out in his bed, straddling him as colours and lights explode behind your eyes as you come, his name bursting from your lips, your name bubbling from his, your movements unplanned but coordinated, your eyes seeing nothing but him, his hands everywhere, tugging your hair, absently massaging your scarred leg, touching, sliding, rubbing, gripping, kneading, clutching you closer to him, making you one with him.

And you will not regret a single moment of it. You will commit it all to memory and it will be your new happy place.

For the moment, though, your shirt is rumpled and he doesn't care because he doesn't make it a habit to iron black Rolling Stones band tees made of cotton. In fact, he generally doesn't iron your clothes because none of them have as much a tendency to wrinkle and stay wrinkled as his shirts. According to him, you own next to nothing with a fanciness rating of more than five on a scale of one to hundred. The only article of clothing which scores above fifty is the black dress he bought for you to wear on your first date. You only ever wore it once (you were reluctant but wore it anyway because he insisted and because his imploring pout is ultimately invincible even if you're a heartless jackass) because he is quick to discover that he likes dinner much better when the other patrons at aren't eyeing you like you're part of their "Special Eye Candy of the Day" dessert. The next morning you find it ironed and hung with a label that reads "Only for special occasions" in his neat script.

He has never bought you any more dresses despite bemoaning about how little he has to ogle at when at work (not his exact words, but you _are_ allowed to embellish). You respond by giving him a disinterested look and taking an extra long lick (with lots of tongue) of the blood red lollipop you got from the nurses' station. He shuts up when the entire clinic turns to look at you make embarrassing noises with the lollipop as your accomplice. You even recall a mother who was quick to cover her precious sugar pie's ears and glare at you with all the venom a mother of seven (six of which had their ears unplugged and attentively turned toward you) surviving on two hours of sleep a day for the past week can inject into her eyes. Even if looks could kill Elizabeth Francesca Helena Jones (you learnt of her name in your next round of clinic duty) wouldn't be able to harm a fly.

His face turned red immediately and you found yourself amused by how easily he is turned on. You know it isn't embarrassment because you've done more embarrassing things before, and if the quiet moan you hear him making above the sound of nobody talking (a one-time special in the clinic) doesn't clue you in then you don't deserve to have your name boldly proclaiming you as head of the Diagnostics Department on the glass door of your office. He blushed even harder (this time from embarrassment) after he realised that the moan wasn't all in his head, ducked his head and dragged you out of the clinic with him. It was the only day Cuddy didn't force you to make an appearance at the clinic. She knew by then that the lawsuits filed under your name aren't just for show.

The make out session that followed on your office's single-seater armchair (less likely to be interrupted there than at his office, because your fellows were busy doing tests and no one else would voluntarily look for you) was fulfilling, to say the least, but it wasn't as good as it is now when you have all the time in the world at home to do whatever you want without the fear of Cuddy storming in demanding you complete your clinic hours for the week.

Your legs are wrapped tightly around his waist, hooked together at the heels, your arms slinking behind him to curl around his neck, cradling his head, while he buries his face in your stomach and plants light kisses across it, his hands gripping your hips just strongly enough to hold you up. You aren't heavy by any stretch of imagination but you are tall. You are nearly his height and he hovers around six feet; without heels you are already taller than most men, which makes you look deceptively like one when you dress in your customary jeans and band tee, your cane helping you hobble along but not taking much of your height away. Your hair doesn't seem to help the situation any despite its length – people just seem to assume that you're a hippy until they walk in front of you and turn around with all the curiosity of people looking to humiliate others so their own embarrassment doesn't loom over them in comparison.

His hair tickles your stomach, which horrifies you because it elicits a giggle. He chuckles deeply, nuzzling his face even more into your torso, messy locks brushing gently your pale skin, urging you to make that sound again. You steadfastly refuse, squirming until he almost drops you after very nearly losing his grip. He quickly moves his hands to cross them under you, one palm against the wall and the other curved suggestively around your posterior. His eyes shift to your face just long enough to see you glaring at him as he sneaks his hands to your derriere (you make an effort to use big words all the time), giving you smirk number two hundred and five.

He has got you where he wants and he is not letting go.

Not that you want him to. You don't think dropping a cripple from nearly three feet high is a good idea (especially with your legs still around him) – he obviously knows what's good for him too because you threatened him once with a week of abstinence. You kept your word (you always do), and you will make good on your promise again if the situation calls.

You stubbornly maintain your grip on his head, lips pressed tightly and eyes defiant. His deep, rumbling laughter sends shivers down your spine and you fight to hold in a moan. The only time he sees fit to assert his manliness is when you are caught in his arms, powerless. You wish he would extend it to his morning rituals as well; his hairdryer can be so annoying when you're trying to sleep.

He offered to blow-dry your hair once and you fell asleep halfway through. It makes no sense that you can sleep when he's running his hands through your hair with the hairdryer blasting noise and hot air into your face but fail so miserably at embracing Morpheus' suggestion when the sounds are coming from outside your room and have to pass through the pillow you pull over your head before reaching your ears. Your hair is admittedly neater after the blow-drying treatment but you decided that there wasn't enough of a difference to warrant daily blow-dry sessions with the master hairdresser Doctor James Wilson. He gave you an exasperated sigh and told you to crop it short if you couldn't be bothered with it.

You have never told him that the only reason you keep your hair long is because he told you he liked long hair. It wouldn't be particularly hard to deduce that even if he hadn't told you since all his wives had long hair, and he had three of them. The conversation about hair came up randomly during one of your "discuss case with Wilson, get sidetracked, have an epiphany while talking about how much you're leeching off him because you keep stealing his lunches" plans (these plans have yet to fail you). He merely mentioned it in the passing but that was somehow enough to convince you that long hair was the way to go.

So you grew your hair out with the excuse that you can't be bothered to go to the hairdresser's and aren't willing to let him within ten feet radius with a pair of scissors. While the truth in those excuses was there, they weren't deciding factors. You later learnt, not long after your first kiss with him, that he only liked long hair because it reminded him of when you first met. You vaguely recall that you did in fact have long hair then, but also recalled that the underlying reason was your laziness to get it cut. You planned to have it trimmed the day after, but meeting him derailed you and kept your focus on your interesting new toy – him – such that you clean forgot about cutting it.

Most times, your wispy dark brown hair is put up in a messy tail which only adds to your unprofessional appearance. Other times, it isn't even combed and he has to pounce on you with his comb (you don't question why he has one) and wrestle you (and your hair) into submission before you are pronounced presentable to the patients in the clinic and released to do your work for the day (which you do by scurrying as far away from the clinic as possible).

Your fellows have long learnt that trying to get you to look any tidier than an unmade bed is asking for a doubling of their workload. It didn't stop Cameron from trying, though, until you lashed out at her with your cane. Thirteen was very taken by your rugged looks until Foreman hooked up with her.

Right now, as you run your hands through his hair, you bend over to place kisses in it with your hair falling around your face. You normally wouldn't approve of anyone sticking their face into someone else's hair but his hair-care hygiene is more thorough than anybody else you've ever met and you're smart enough a doctor to diagnose yourself before any strange parasite that could have been lodged in his hair can make a corpse out of you. You smile as his resumes his tender kisses on your stomach and gently rub your face into his hair, sniffing it as you let yourself be overwhelmed by his scent.

Your first reaction when your shirt falls over his head is to smirk. The fabric is so old and stretched that he has insisted countless times you throw it away despite the view he gets to enjoy whenever he looks down your front. His kisses stop abruptly as he tries to ease the shirt off his head without the use of his hands (which are currently occupied with keeping you three feet up), and he failed miserably, as expected. You stop smirking, though, when he stills and the breaths that send pleasurable tingles through you start moving higher and higher up until you feel them on your chest. By then, you are too preoccupied with the fact that his face is pressed between your breasts to notice how heavy his breathing has become.

You know he is merely teasing you but you can't help the erratic beating of your heart or the sudden labouring of your breathing. Your throat is tight and your back is rigid, arched. The fingers you have in his hair instantly tense up, curling into a death grip with his hair caught between them, while your legs squeeze his torso so tightly you're afraid he's going to complain of bruising tomorrow.

The moment lasts a couple of seconds, half a minute at most, before he ducks his head and continues smothering your stomach with kisses like nothing has happened. The feeling of his decidedly not ugly and not hooked nose flush against your sternum has made you more aware of yourself than you have ever been. You are suddenly worried that you are too old, too damaged and too much of an ass for him. He isn't forty yet, young enough to get married a few more times before having to decide to settle with a jackass like you because nobody else wants an old man. If he wants children he can still have them with someone else. You are too old and the risks to great. If he wants a perfect family he can still have that with wife number four, five or six. Your jerk-like tendencies aren't ideal for that in any foreseeable future. You can't walk down an aisle properly with your limp either.

You have always been insecure about many things (least of which involve diagnoses, but even you have to admit that you can be wrong). You operate on the assumption that the true nature of everything is hidden, that nobody tells the truth. To survive is to understand, to not believe unless you are presented with indisputable proof. The only one who has come close to seeing the truth you constantly keep buried is him, but even then you are unwilling to bare yourself completely to him, to be exposed and naked and vulnerable – to be open to hurt. You have made the first move to trust in someone else when you chose to accept that you two can be more than friends, and now you are waiting for his answer.

You want him to tell you that he will never leave you, and you want to believe it. You want to believe everything that he says. You want to believe his assurances. You want to believe his permanence. You just want to believe in him. If you can only trust in one person, you want to throw yourself into his arms.

As if sensing your insecurity he whispers quietly under your shirt, against your abdomen, "You are perfect."

And you believe him.

* * *

><p><strong>AN:** Why gender-bent House? Because no one's written about it, that's why. I have a lot of fun analysing how gender-bent characters retain their personalities after being gender-bent so I make it a point to look for gender-bender fictions in every fandom I have ever gravitated towards. The only fandom that doesn't have a single gender-bending story is House (there was a crack fiction about gender-bent Wilson, but I wanted a serious story, and besides, Wilson was incredibly OOC in that fiction), so I decided to make history and be the first.

Why House/Wilson? That…doesn't really have a straight-forward answer. I like Wilson. I like House. I want them in the same fiction. Having them interact purely platonically doesn't make for a very interesting read since gender-bent House will act exactly the same anyway, and there will be absolutely no point writing a gender-bending story if nothing's going to change. I mean, I _could_ write one that illustrates how unchanging their friendship is going to be despite any changes, but I'd like something more substantial, so yeah, there you go. If you're asking me why I didn't hook House up with Cuddy like in the series, I will admit, with no amount of shame, that while I can understand that some people are born homosexual, I do not condone homosexuality by choice. House obviously isn't gay (at least, he isn't gay from what I can tell), so gender-bending should make no difference to his heterosexual identity.

Why gender-bend _House_? Why not gender-bend Wilson instead? Well…that's because Wilson's already girly enough (I don't know any men who blow-dry their hair) and gender-bending him is not going to be as much a challenge. House, on the other hand, presents a very interesting dilemma, because from his personality, one would assume correctly that he is the dominant personality in his and Wilson's relationship. Making him biologically submissive is a twist that many probably can't envisage. I like challenges like these. I want to see where my writing can take me (because honestly, I write before I think so everything is a surprise).

Why lots of kissing? I don't know. It just seemed appropriate because I can digress into a lot of different aspects of House's life without making things too complicated. Hands in one place, I digress into a rant about where the hands are touching. Intimacy brings up an interesting aspect of House and Wilson's relationship as well. They were very close as friends too, despite being two men with nothing romantic going on between them. I have no experience with kisses so if things started sounding strange, that's my inexperience speaking. Forced imagination can only carry me so far.

Why second person point of view? Why present tense? Would it suffice if I say that I actually conceived the story in second person's point of view as well as in present tense and would have trouble adopting a different point of view or tense?

If no one has noticed, this is an entire 8,143-word story in which nothing but making-out happens. If this isn't an achievement, I don't know what is. X) Conversation made perfect sense with only 10 words. Beat that. In addition, Microsoft's spelling and grammar check churned up no mistakes for this entire fiction (including the A/N). I'm not sure if I should be proud of that (the spell check seems to be notorious in my school for being faulty) but this _is_ an accomplishment.

…I think I'm interested enough to write an entire series about gender-bent House. I must be so bored if I'm resorting to things like these to pass my time. What should my next gender-bent House story be about?


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